December 6, 2009

AWA – Experts say – WRONG SOLUTION

This comment to us, from an expert who basically ‘wrote the book’ on registrant monitoring. He asked to remain anonymous due to his role with the State of Minnesota.

I can tell you that I believe that it is unlikely AWA will reduce recidivism, in fact, I believe that it may have the contradictory effect of increasing it because of the destabilizing effects on sex offenders trying to establish themselves in communities.

In Minnesota, our registration and notification system is such that only a fraction of registered sex offenders are placed on the Internet – Level 3 offenders (not AWA Level 3s, but a risk beased classification system), and noncompliant offenders. As a result, our compliance rate is likely among the highest in the nation. And, you can download a report that shows that our sex offender recidivism rates have dramatically reduced by anywhere from 50% to 80% from 1990 to 2002 (http://www.doc.state.mn.us/publications/documents/04-07SexOffenderReport-Recidivism.pdf).